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“I figured.”
“To your point, I hate my closet. Do you solicit work in L.A.?”
“I’m sure you can find someone closer who’ll do just as good of a job.” He regards me sternly.
“I don’t know about that. You seem to be a singular experience, Jackson Burke.” I push off the counter and close the gap between us, clutching his waist with my hands and tipping my chin to look up at him. “It’s not all for publicity and show. I just said that to get her off my back.”
“You don’t have to explain to me, Mini. You have to do what you have to do.”
“I don’t want you to think you don’t mean anything,” I mumble. What I want is for him to see through me. I want him to challenge me.
He doesn’t.
“I take it the second half of that conversation involves Xavier?” he asks, his voice tight.
If there was ever an opportunity to lose the chance of a kiss, bringing up Xavier does it. I let go of Jax and sigh. “Meredith wants a reconciliation. I have an audition I’m thinking of skipping.”
“Why?”
“Isn’t it obvious?”
“You don’t want the show?” he guesses, proving it isn’t obvious. I’m set up to tell him the truth. That I don’t want to go to the audition because I don’t want to reenter the fishbowl. I don’t want to reconcile with Xavier. For one reason.
“I kind of want to keep hiding out,” I tell him like a big chicken.
“And what? Get a career in sales here in Columbus? Go back to business school?”
“Why not?”
He startles me with a laugh. “Allie, you hated those classes. The only reason you did it was because your parents wanted you to find what they believed was a ‘good, steady job.’ ”
I remember those words well. They were trumpeted throughout my formative years, especially when I expressed more than a passing interest in theater.
“Maybe I’m cut out for a ‘good, steady job.’ Maybe they were right.” I’m being indignant not so much about a job—which honestly sounds horrible—but about how Jax makes it sound like I don’t fit into his world. And his comment about my closet in L.A. is an unwelcome reminder that he doesn’t fit into mine, either.
“No. They were wrong.” His eyebrows are a pair of angry slants. “You think I’m going to let you give up on your dream? Talk to Catarina. Have her write an article that clears your name. Fuck Xavier and Millie.”
“It’s not that simple. The public will think I’m trying to get them to like me again.”
“Aren’t you?”
“They’ll say I turned on Xavier. He’ll come out with a statement of denial and who do you think they’ll believe?”
“Who cares who they believe?”
“Everyone in that damn town who will pass on the opportunity to hire me!” I practically shout.
Unfazed, Jax leans closer and growls, “You’re braver than this.”
I blanch at the accusation for two reasons. One, he’s right. I’m braver than handing my life over to an agent and an ex-boyfriend with questionable morals. Two, Jax is also right about the fact that I’m sidestepping a land mine. The truth that he’s daring me to tell is what really happened the night Millie’s Oscar was photographed in my arms. Another truth—the one that he has no idea I want to admit—is that I’ve fallen in love with him.
Head over heels. Ass over teakettle. Gone with the Wind, fallen for him.
And as I’m peering up at his angry expression, his tense posture, and his delicious mouth, I’m faced with another awful truth.
While I was falling for him, he wasn’t returning the favor.
